Coronavirus pushes logistics automation

摘要

IN MARCH, AMAZON: announced it planned on hiring 100,000 extra workers to meet the rise in demand for online shopping created by Coronavirus-caused shutdowns and social distancing. On March 19, 2020, unions said workers were demanding that Amazon takes their lives seriously. The night before a facility in Queens, New York, had been closed for deep cleaning after an employee tested positive for the virus. There are reports that some Amazon warehouse workers in Italy and Spain have tested positive. In France, several hundred Amazon workers protested to demand better measures to protect their safety. In Italy, there have been calls for a strike. This and similar developments once again bring into focus the motivation, and at times the imperative, to increase automation in the logistics and delivery chain. IDTechEx (www.idtechex.com) in Cambridge, United Kingdom, has been examining the technological and commercial trends in this field for several years. Its report "Mobile Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, and Drones in Logistics, Warehousing, and Delivery 2020-2040" focuses on automation of movement in every step of the logistics and delivery chain ranging from a warehouse or a factory to the delivery of goods to the final customer destination. This landscape - and therefore, the scope of the report - includes the following: 1. automated guide carts and vehicles 2. autonomous mobile industry vehicles, such as forklifts and tugs 3. goods-to-person automated carts/robots 4. collaborative autonomous mobile robots 5. mobile picking robots for regular- and irregular-shaped items 6. autonomous trucks, including levels 4 and 5 7. delivery vans and pods, including levels 4 and 5 8. last-mile sidewalk delivery robots 9. delivery drones.